Warm Nights On A Non Moving Train

Further signs that the Third World lifestyle we all crave is coming our way...

RailCorp must revisit procedures for managing stranded trains after scores of CityRail passengers were trapped on an interurban service between Hazelbrook and Lawson on Wednesday afternoon for over two and a half hours, despite being metres from Hazelbrook station.

The delay, initially caused by a loss of power to the privately operated Indian Pacific, was exacerbated by train controllers needing authorisation paperwork before the stranded interurban service could proceed.

In these situations the health, safety and comfort of the travelling public must be paramount. Every effort must be made to get the passengers off the train as soon as possible. Two and a half hours is a pathetic and unacceptable response, but par for the course for a management whose response to the Glenbrook Disaster is to cover their own backsides while denying resources and authority to frontline operational staff.

Justice McInerney’s inquiry into the Glenbrook disaster and the tragic loss of life made recommendations, especially regarding train operator communications, which are still yet to be acted upon. Blustering arguments from RailCorp management about safety are just hogwash as it was perfectly safe on Wednesday night to transport passengers two hundred metres to the next station (as was acknowledged by operational staff on the spot) from where people could have made alternative arrangements.

Alex Tibbits from SMH Online reported at 6.51pm that delays were due to “a truck that had rolled on to the tracks at Blackheath at about 4.50pm today.” And that “commuters are being transferred to buses at Penrith [to continue their journey]” This wasn’t happening at Lawson nearly an hour after Tibbits’ report appeared online.

Tibbits relied on a CityRail spokesman, who made no mention of the failure of the privately owned Indian Pacific - which managed to travel on to Lithgow on the “closed” line, as did the service I was stranded on after the RailCorp paperwork was completed nearly four hours later.

This is shoddy journalism as not only was his report plain wrong - and I speak as an eyewitness - but would have added to the confusion for not only the travelling public, but caused anxiety for friends and relatives of those on the train trying to find out what was happening.

When newspapers meant something they employed people on the ground called stringers to inform news editors and journalists of stories, and act as a confirmation of official versions of events. This journalism-by-press-release has undermined the credibility of the Herald in the eyes of its many readers from the Blue Mountains.

It couldn’t undermine their view of RailCorp as that simply isn’t possible.

"When we said we'd rip up WorkChoices, what we really meant was..."

On the Monday prior to the recent election John Howard said he was happy for the 2007 poll to be a referendum on WorkChoices. It was good that he was happy, because that is exactly what it had become by then anyway. The Your Rights At Work campaign showed that community campaigns do work; if the community is engaged. Just over 12,500 people across NSW got involved in the campaign. These were people, separate from the ALP, who came from all walks of life - many who had never been involved in a political campaign in their lives - who took the fight for rights at work to the streets, shopping centres, train stations, festivals and community events of our nation. If you weren't engaged at some stage by the Your Rights At Work campaign you simply weren't living in Australia for the last 18 months. It was a brand that was everywhere. And what carried that brand? Ordinary people. And many of these people had borne the brunt of WorkChoices - they'd had their incomes slashed, been sacked unfairly, had their rosters go all over the place and been bullied and intimidated by employers that took Howard's laws as a green light for bastadry. If you want examples I have heaps and am happy to share them. Which is what makes Julia Gillard's statements about not being in a rush and being "careful and measured" so sickening. Those same employers will read this gutlessness as a further green light to continue to treat human beings like shovels to be picked up and put down when needed. We are seeing this already, most notably with Telstra. What part of the phrase 'rip up WorkChoices' doesn't the Rudd-Gillard government understand?

• A credible survey has shown that WorkChoices was the reason why 5.6 percent of voters shifted their vote to the ALP
• It is highly unlikely that Kevin Rudd would be Prime Minister now if it wasn't for the Your Rights At Work campaign.
• Neither Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard or any other ALP politician has mentioned the Your Rights At Work campaign in any report since the election, let alone thank and acknowledge both the people and the community campaign that worked incredibly hard put them where they are today.

This is, of course, being aided and abetted by the ignorant ostriches in our pathetic media, who must live in some parallel universe where the Your Rights At Work campaign never happened. The Your Rights At Work campaign WILL continue. We are not going away just so that Krudd and Gillard can schmooze the Australian business community - the community we live in comes first.

Another Ostrich

Peter Hartcher joins the queue of the clueless in today's Sydney Morning Herald, flailing around as to why we kicked Howard out because of the myth that this is a 'booming' economy. The economy is NOT booming for most of us - we are just getting deeper in debt. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has pointed out that one in five households earns less than $20,000 a year, with half earning less than $37,000. What sort of economic boom do you celebrate when half the country is on $700 a week or less? It was the Your Rights At Work Campaign stupid: When 12,500 people mobilise on an issue they will change a government, as the Your Rights At Work Campaign did. Now, can all the commentators take a deep breath and stop trying to rewrite history; and can journalists be forced to spend some time in the real world please?

How To Build An Imbecile III

The astonishing thing about Graham Young is not that he's the chief editor of Online Opinion, or that he's vice-president of Queensland Liberal Party, or even that he's wrap up of the election was published in the satirical newspaper, TheAustralian; no the really astonishing thing is that this bloke has enough brain cells to remember how to breathe. Here's another Ostrich, with his head in the sand, ignoring the unpalatable truth that the Your Rights At Work Campaign is a machine made of people, thousands of 'em. Young is another dill peddling the spin doctor's myths. Just how dissolute this reaction is can be measured by the fact that even the Washington Post gets it, 14,000 kilometres away from the end of Graham Young's nose, as this excellent piece from E.J. Dionne Jnr (now that's a Septic handle if ever I heard one) explains.

How To Build An Imbecile II

The rewriting of history continues apace this week with the latest theory given oxygen being Christian Kerr's assertion over at Crikey that it was all the Lindsay fake-flyer business what won it for Rudd. Yeah, that makes sense. A campaign involving 180,000 ordinary Australians shifts 5.6 percent of the vote, but really it was just a crazed Dentist from Penrith. Christian likes to think he's ever so witty, with the occasional bon-mot sprinkled amid the whacky myths he likes to popularise, but usually he's about as funny as a dead baby's doll - and another good example of how even alternative journalism is riddled with the same pretentious plummy prats that clog up the mainstream media. Unaccountable, unreliable, self-serving and - as this instance shows - often just plain wrong. For those that came in late, it was the Your Rights At Work campaign that won it - along with the thousands of ordinary Australians that got off their arses and did something about WorkChoices. But the politics industry can't be seen to thank them, there's no billable hours in that.

Rewriting History

"It's time for a new page to be written in our nation's history." Kevin Rudd, November 24, 2007.

In the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election tens of thousands of ordinary Australians mobilised into a concerted campaign to change a government. These people re-wrote Australian history.

Yet, as soon as that victory was achieved, their efforts were all but ignored by, not just vast swathes of the media, but also by the ultimate beneficiaries, the incoming government.

The strength of the Your Rights At Work campaign comes from its acknowledgement by the defeated Liberal Party - federal director, Brian Loughnane, told media on the Sunday after the election that Work Choices had cost the Coalition key support, a statement echoed by Liberal MP and campaign spokesman, Andrew Robb.

ALP campaign director Tim Gartrell described WorkChoices as “the most important issue of the campaign”.

“It would have been more difficult to win without it.”

"I mean look at these young guys at the gate - you'd have been dragging them in here to vote last time,” said Graham Perrett, ALP Candidate for Moreton, while visiting a polling booth on election day. "This time they're here handing out cards on the rights at work issue.”

In the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro big swings were recorded in communities west of the great divide where WorkChoices was seen as a threat.

Polling done for the ACTU showed a 5.7% shift from Howard to Labor motivated by industrial relations as the key issue.

None of this would have happened without a concerted grass roots campaign - this was no astroturfing exercise - that saw the ACTU gather an email database of 180,000 addresses, from which a popular localised word of mouth campaign spread.

For over two years the Your Rights At Work campaign has been beavering away, under the radar, in 24 targeted coalition held seats.

Whether leafleting, letterboxing, doorknocking, forwarding emails, holding a street stall or collecting signatures, an army of campaigners braved everything from Darwin’s tropical storms to the snows of the Great Dividing Range to make sure that the impact of WorkChoices became issue number one across a vast swathe of middle Australians in marginal seats.

The Your Rights at Work bumper stickers, T-shirts and later house signs, became eponymous. These people were shifting voter sentiment where it mattered. Some media dismissed it as a cynical Trade Union scare campaign or stunt at best. The rest ignored it.

But the people involved in the campaign came from an extraordinary array of union and non-union backgrounds. There were the usual suspects, but there were more, many more, that became involved in a community campaign for the first time in their lives.

Many of these people took to it with a gusto lacking in the rank and file of both major parties. This is a newly politicised group of Australians, and they threw up some amazing champions.

One such example was Jo Jacobson, an articulate and savvy health worker who became the public face of the opposition to WorkChoices in the Penrith based seat of Lindsay long before the ALP had even settled on a candidate.

Many campaigners took to one-on-one conversations with their peers. In marginal Macquarie a ripped off hotel worker named Steve Eisenberger made a habit of wearing his Your Rights At Work T-shirt around his blue-collar mates - winning over a small coterie who had previously backed Howard over what are euphemistically referred to as ‘security’ issues.

There were thousands of Steve Eisenburgers operating across all sorts of groups - social, sporting, civic and cultural - to get the message out.

The word of mouth message cut through to an increasing number of Australians while Howard and Barbara Bennett remained as background white noise, drowned out by the wise words of their Your Rights At Work neighbour and their own experiences.

The community campaign was backed up by a shoestring (compared to the Federal Government’s) advertising campaign that re-enforced the word-of-mouth message.

Despite (or possibly because of) widespread support, many Your Rights At Work signs were stolen or defaced, as well as threats and acts of vandalism aimed at Your Rights At Work activists.

Still, the thousands of volunteers didn’t complain - instead they handed out their own How To Vote card on election day, separate from the major parties - in the rain, the sun, the heat, the wind. They made sure that WorkChoices was on the forefront of voter’s minds where it mattered.

Of the 24 targeted coalition held seats, the ALP won 20 and 3 are currently too close to call.

It’s an extraordinary achievement in anyone’s reckoning - so where is the acknowledgement to these Australians by either the media or the man holding the trophy, Kevin Rudd?

There was no direct mention of either WorkChoices or the Your Rights At Work campaign in the Hawker-Brittonesque pfaff that passed as Rudd’s acceptance speech.

Not much of a run in the media either. A bit of a go over at the SMAge, with Andrew West providing a bit of background in the SMH and a puff piece on the ACTU’s spin-doctors in the Age, while Mark Bahnisch and Wayne Errington in Crikey both nominated WorkChoices as a killer issue for the Coalition.

The last time a Prime Minister lost his seat - Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 - it was to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall in a foretaste of the Your Rights At Work Campaign.

One of the key issues in 1929 was Bruce’s dream of smashing the union movement and regulated working arrangements based on fairness.

Australia said no to individual contracts in droves, and there was a landslide win to Labor. The depression hit and two years later Scullin’s Labor Government dissolved into dissent, panic and scandal.

The Rudd Government will now be faced with a plethora of conflicting policy objectives - one of which will be to screw down the price of labour. We all know that this will be borne by those least able to afford a cut in their living standards.

As early as the Sunday morning after the election Australian Business Council head Greg Bailey dismissed “fears” the union movement may hold sway over a Rudd government.

“If you listened to Kevin Rudd last night that is not an impression you would have got,” Bailey told the ABC, while over at Forbes Magazine CommSec chief equities economist Craig James said the Australian business community had been prepared for a Labor victory.

“In terms of economic policy, nothing really changes too much,” said James, in an observation that would have been news last week.

Rudd was on the 7.30 report blaming the Liberals “from day one” for threatening to be obstructive over repealing WorkChoices. They’ve already set up the fall guy and an alibi - the Senate.

Labor is said to be keen to recall Parliament to introduce its legislation to change the Howard Government's Work Choices laws, but just how keen remains to be seen.

"I hate to say it, but Costello was right when he said the new government will start rewriting history," Unions NSW secretary John Robertson told the SMH on Monday. "It's already begun and Rudd and company are out there saying it was health or education or climate change. Sure, it was a bit of all those, but the biggest issue was Work Choices."

I got a nice email from Sharan Burrow and Jeff Lawrence at the ACTU for my support for the Your Rights At Work campaign.

”Well done,” they said. “You have helped make history.”

Just like those who took on Stanley Melbourne Bruce did nearly eighty years ago.

Yes, Kevin Rudd - and the media - appears to want to write a new page in Australia’s History - a page where it is as if the tens of thousands of ordinary hard working Australians, who banded together as the Your Rights At Work Campaign and changed a government, never existed.

But after the success of our campaign so far, we are highly unlikely to go away.